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On DVD

Sorority Boys

PLUGGED IN RATING

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Movie Review

To the men of Kappa Omicron Kappa, college is a four-year long party, made for guzzling all the booze and bedding all the women they can. There are no worries about grades and graduation—KOK alum have formed the ultimate of old boys’ clubs, ensuring that any brother in good standing will be ushered into a cushy job complete with even more beer and babes. But the future doesn’t look so rosy for Dave, Adam and Doofer. Their loyalty to the house is called into question when they’re accused of stealing money designated for the annual homecoming KOKtail Cruise—a shmooze-fest where the dirty old men dangle lavish opportunities before the dirty young men.

Ousted from the KOK house and in desperate pursuit of acquittal, the boys disguise themselves and move into the Delta Omicron Gamma sorority house, home of a dozen feminists and outcasts of questionable sexual preference. Why? Who knows. The move has little plot purpose, but it does provide opportunities for lots of coarse sexual talk and embarrassing situations. Rooming with their arch-enemies, Dave, Adam and Doofer learn more than they ever wanted to know about how the other half lives. Of course, Dave (as "Daisy") complicates things by falling in love with the "femi-nazi" house president, Leah. He ends up risking his future job as well as his relationship with his KOK father for the sake of her love. But by that point, anyone who might have given a rip about their relationship has already fled the theater to find a shower.

positive content: The only redeeming element of this film is that it pokes fun at a culture so sex-crazed that everything is a sexual perversion, experiment, hang-up or innuendo. Dave turns out to be the guy who breaks the mold, seeing relationships as more than an excuse for sex. But any positivity is absolutely negated because the film also indulges in crazed sexual talk and activity.

sexual content: If it’s not already obvious, sex is what this film is all about. And—as in the real world, so onscreen—when sex is an end in itself, normalcy soon becomes boring. Sorority Boys exploits all kinds of perversion and deviancy, including self-pleasuring, homosexual sex and incest.

It starts with plain old titillation. Ditzy sorority girls in short skirts and tight shirts. Fraternity boys with bare backsides. Prolonged shots of bare breasts. Cut to the guys’ house. Dirty dancing mixes with alcohol of every kind. Frat parties have one purpose: to make sure every guy has a girl (or two, or three) in bed by morning. When the "lucky" one night stand awakes and leaves, she is made to take "the walk of shame," traversing hallways and stairways lined with hungover, chanting frat boys bent on completing her humiliation. In the room he shares with Dave, Adam has equipped a video camera with a motion detector and aimed it toward his bed, so that he can be the star of his own homemade porno movies (clips of these films are shown on several occasions). Doofer says he is addicted to pornography and "masturbates constantly."

Once the boys move into the girls house, the homosexual and transvestite gags kick in. There are lots of shots of guys in women’s clothing and underwear. Sorority girls not willing to have sex at the drop of a hat are stereotyped as lesbians and bombarded with vibrators and other sex toys sent by slingshot through their windows. Physical comedy of the boys trying to look like girls involves a lot of grabbing and tugging of (fake) female body parts and (real) male ones. Dave’s first bathing experience in the DOG house is interrupted by Leah, who joins him in the community shower (she’s not wearing her contacts). He is immediately turned on, and only soap suds hide his arousal (they don’t hide her breasts). Rather than taking steps to avoid future precarious situations, "Daisy" and Leah soon make a habit of showering together. Of course, Leah thinks she’s falling in love with another woman. This relationship culminates with the two (Dave is in drag) kissing in bed. Adam, as "Adina," gets into an even worse predicament. In hopes of vindicating himself and his buddies, he tries to seduce his own younger brother (it’s not clear if they’re biological brothers or just fraternity brothers). The two—not aware of each others’ identity because Adam is unconscious and Jimmy is clueless—wind up having anal sex. It’s hard to imagine that there’s more, but there is. Crude sexual jokes, hurtful labels and plenty of bodily fluids make this a raunch-fest to remember (or to try to forget).

violent content: Violence is mostly cartoonish. Doofer uses a handgun to shoot a lock off a trunk and beats his alarm clock with a hammer. A girl falls from Adam’s window. A guy gets hit in the face by a door. Guys posing as girls pack surprisingly powerful punches when other guys try to hit on them. Dave and Adam get into a "girl-fight." During a powder puff football game, both teams play dirty.

crude or profane language: Sexual crudities flow freely. More than a dozen f-words, used mostly as harsh slang for sex. Almost that many s-words and mild profanities. Several misuses of God’s name.

drug and alcohol content: Beer and hard liquor are omnipresent at the KOK house and on a party boat. Morning-after shots show wall-to-wall passed-out frat boys. Doofer has spent 13 years in college, and was mostly too drunk to remember any of them. Bongs appear several times as drug paraphernalia and as phallic symbols. Jimmy and "Adina" both put date-rape drugs in each others’ drinks. A female student from France (who has an absurd amount of body hair) smokes perpetually.

other negative elements: Yes, it’s supposed to be satire, but Sorority Boys can’t stop laughing at its stereotyping and abuse of women long enough for the audience to take serious stock of why they’re wrong. As The New York Post’s Jonathan Foreman wrote, ". . . whatever the movie's sentimental, hypocritical lessons about sexism, its true colors come out in various wet T-shirt and shower scenes."

conclusion: In the movie world it’s a given that any Hollywood "breakthrough" will be followed by an endless string of derivative films, usually demonstrating the law of diminishing returns. When the "cream of the crop" is American Pie, it’s hard to fathom things degenerating from there, but Sorority Boys tries its hardest to do just that. It’s all the sex gags with an even more incoherent plot. What’s worse, 7th Heaven sweetheart Barry Watson headlines this bawdy bomb, so it’s likely to draw at least a few of that show’s teenage audience. If the R-rating isn’t enough to make parents put their foot down, let me state it plainly: Sorority Boys is a lewd excuse for a comedy equal to any torture a twisted fraternity hazing committee could think up.

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